


burning bright

by Frostandcoal



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, References to Torture, Violence, canon character death, dark themes, domestic abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 19:42:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12042900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frostandcoal/pseuds/Frostandcoal
Summary: Nathan Wesninski is a poison that kills indiscriminately from the ground up -- weed, stalk, flower -- and leaves nothing but dead earth in its wake.She’d rather have a castle than a garden. There’s no point in being a flower if all you’re going to do is fade.There's only one way this will end.





	burning bright

**Author's Note:**

> I'm fascinated by Neil's fucked up parents and how the FUCK they ended up married _and having a child_. This is a bit of a character exploration and it's pretty dark but not explicit -- still, it's Nathan Wesninski the torturer and Mary Hatford who at some point thought she was into that, so, you know, read with caution. 
> 
> This ain't pretty, folks.

Mary is nineteen years old, in America for the second time and bored to death at a party where she knows no one, all the talk a low hum around her, as thrilling as a metronome. 

Her father and her brother are nowhere to be found, likely squirreled away in some dark room with concrete walls and a drain in the center of the floor, screams and blood worn like echoes into the stone.

She slips her escort -- a politician’s son who stares at her breasts and compliments her accent -- and goes outside. It’s late winter and still too cold to be without a coat, but at least she’s alone. She curls her fingers into the stone railing, her breath a spill in the night air. 

The thought of going back inside makes her want to choke but she’ll have to do it anyway. Her father’s empire is built on an elaborate system of favors and threats, and as a woman she will only ever be the former. 

Mary hears the door open and someone says her name - instead of going back inside, she chooses to slip out of her heels and hurry down the wide steps, moving quietly, because she is a small woman in a world of violent men and the first thing she ever learned how to be was silent. 

There’s a garden with a trite little fountain and a path; it’s a perfectly acceptable place for her to be, though, so she goes around the side of the house instead.

Her stockings tear on the gravel, and the pain makes her smile, grim and satisfied. 

She turns a corner and sees a man bent over what appears to be an outdoor spigot. He looks up at her; there’s enough moonlight to see his hair, red like the blood he’s washing off his hands. 

“You look lost,” he says, not kindly. An American. 

Mary walks up to the man and takes his hand in hers, staring down at the blood he hasn’t quite managed to wash off. Her fingers dance over the smear of blood, then she raises his hand to her mouth and traces the line of it with her tongue. “I’m Mary.” 

His eyes are starlight-cold but his skin is hot. The blood on his skin tastes like copper. “I’m Nathan.” 

***

She sees him the next day in the kitchen, standing at the counter and slicing vegetables. The knife jumps in his fingers like a puppet on strings. Her eyes are drawn to that shock of hair, not red like freshly-spilled blood, more like a stain that’s set and can’t be washed away. 

Stuart sees her looking and frowns; later, he tugs her into the powder room on the first floor and says in a low voice, “That’s no one you need to bother with, Mary. He’s not the sort for a girl like you.” 

Mary is a blooming rose on the vine, protected by thorns and nourished by blood-soaked soil. Something beautiful but not meant to last; silken petals that will dry to husks and turn to dust. 

Nathan Wesninski is a poison that kills indiscriminately from the ground up -- weed, stalk, flower -- and leaves nothing but dead earth in its wake. 

She’d rather have a castle than a garden. There’s no point in being a flower if all you’re going to do is fade. 

***

One day she goes into the basement and tucks herself away inside a cabinet, and watches him work. 

She wonders what it must feel like to carve someone’s life away. It turns her stomach but she doesn’t stop watching; she’s known where she comes from, and now, she sees it. Her father would never be elbow-deep in someone’s blood, but it’s on his orders that men like Nathan are. 

Nathan is dispassionate about it, for the most part -- it’s a job, that’s clear, and he’s doing what he does because he’s been told it is what he must do. But when he fucks her afterward, his hands are trembling and his eyes are bloodlust-bright, he’s lost somewhere else and she wonders if wherever he is he’s fucking her or killing her and decides it doesn’t matter, not really. 

***

Only her brother tries to talk her out of the marriage. 

“That man is not sane,” Stuart says, hands on her upper arms. “He is dangerous, and you know what it means if you marry him. It means you can’t have a child, and certainly not a son.” 

“There are ways, dear brother, of making sure that doesn’t happen,” she says, and presses a kiss to his cheek. “It is sweet of you to worry about me, but you shouldn’t. Nathan treats me like a queen.” 

_ Queen Mary. Bloody Mary.  _

Stuart’s skin is cool to the touch. In contrast, Nathan’s always  _ burns.  _

Mary wants to burn, too. 

(Or so she thinks.)

***

On their wedding night he fucks her with a knife to her jugular, telling her what he will do to her if she ever betrays him. 

It’s the most passionate he’s ever been about anything, words edged and hot like the heated blade of a knife, and he slips and cuts her on the shoulder when he comes -- then stares at the blood at her skin and rubs his fingers through it, panting, marking her and saying, over and over again,  _ I will tear you apart if you betray me.  _

***

He likes to fuck her after he kills. He does this one afternoon and on his way out of the house, she catches him by the arm and kisses him, murmuring, “Darling, you’ve got blood on your collar.” 

It’s the only time she ever hears him laugh. 

***

The first time he hits her, she hits him back and feels the anger tremble in her fingers like a living thing, tearing at his hair while he bites at her neck, hands gripping bruises into her thighs.  

They tear each other to pieces and she loves it. 

She thinks she understands what kind of man he is. 

(She doesn’t.)

(She will.)

***

“Get rid of it,” says Nathan, when she tells him about the baby. “If you don’t, I won’t be responsible for your sanity when they take it from you.” 

“As if they could break me,” she scoffs, because she does not believe that it is possible. 

(She will.)

“Do what you want,” he says. “But remember I warned you.” 

(She won’t.) 

***

It isn’t so much that Mary looks into her son’s eyes and realizes what love is. It’s that she realizes, finally, what it isn’t. 

***

The truth comes to her as the truth always does -- simple and merciless, paralyzing like a shot to the spine. 

All this time she’s fancied herself a queen, but she isn’t, not really. 

All she’s ever been is a prisoner. 

And now Nathaniel is one, too. 

***

“I’m taking Nathaniel to Castle Evermore,” Nathan tells her. 

“No,” she says, and the word rings in her head as he hits her, over and over again, the sound like a bell. 

“I told you,” Nathan hisses, grabbing her by the hair. “I warned you, and you didn’t believe me. Either he will pass this test or he will fail.” Nathan stares at her with bright, endless eyes. “If he fails, you’ll be there, Mary. You’ll watch. Every second of it, you’ll  _ watch. _ ”

That's when Mary understands that she doesn’t need to bleed for him to kill her. 

***

She dyes Nathaniel’s hair and makes him change his eyes because she cannot stand to see Nathan looking back at her. 

She cannot stand knowing what she has done. 

All she wants is for him to be someone else. 

***

This is the only way it was ever going to end.

Mary lays in the back of the car, gasping for breath, trying to think of what she can say to her son before the end. 

He knows everything she’s taught him, he knows how to survive and he knows the one thing she has tried to make clear, over and over again,  _ run, run and keep going, don’t stop, don’t be what we made you.  _

The light grows dimmer, fading to a pinprick and she is numb, cold, and there’s no more thoughts of queens and diamonds or empires or castles, there’s just a clock ticking down slow and she tries to keep talking, tries to tell him because she wants him to know -- 

_ I’m sorry.  _

***

At the end of the day, everything burns. 

(Ashes to ashes.) 

(Dust to dust.) 


End file.
